2015 Winter Semester

The world is undergoing massive demographic changes: longer life and falling birth rates (due to falling fertility as well as changes in lifestyle) mean that by 2050 the global population of people over 60 will reach 21.1%, that is, more than 2 billion people (UN, 2013, p. xii). Developed nations are experiencing an even greater increase in the ratio of older people to their total populations. While Germany’s population is projected to decrease by 10 million between now and 2060 (EU, 2014, p.2) to 71 million, its percentage of older people (65 and over) is expected to increase from 20% to 33% over the same period (German Federal Statistics Office).

While this obviously provides many challenges (to healthcare and public services, for example), it also offers many opportunities (for commercial as well as public and voluntary sectors). This project will focus on the context of this globally ageing population to deliver a range of relevant design outcomes.

We will encounter a number of different research methodologies, methods and tools used by designers at the front-end of their processes, particularly those that focus upon how real people live, and the global drivers that affect them. We will work on generating insights from the research that you carry out, and develop ways for finding opportunities that come from these insights. We will create design concepts that relate to these opportunities and verify them by putting them back into the contexts in which they will operate – at the level of the user, the public or private organisation that provides a service, or whatever is appropriate.

You will need to create a design response that comes from the observations, insights, and opportunities generated from your research into the ageing population. Your design can be pitched either at the present (2015) or the future (2030).

Your design context may be anything you choose (for example, commercial, public sector service, and so on).

ELECTIVE MODULE 2D | cut ‘n’ remixProfessor: Prof. Bernd Hennig

„It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”
Jean-Luc Godard „Remix means that the original work is still recognizable as such within a derivative work. (…). To paraphrase Lawrence Lessig, Harvard law professor and founder of Creative Commons: Remix culture is the transition from a passive, consumption-based read-only culture towards an active, creative read/write culture.“ http://right2remix.org/#01-manifest

…short and simple:
We will create our own remix concepts and put it into practice.

ELECTIVE MODULE 3D | WelcomeProfessor: Prof. Uwe Gellert

The course is about exploring the needs of newbies in foreign countries, in cities, in public areas, administrative offices, buildings, anywhere you are new and quite not sure you are going the right path – and furthermore the use of machines, handhold or wearable devices, analog, digital, hardware or software controlled… it is about the daily little awkwardness and annoyances to get along or to get the things do – what you want.

We will explore, test, analyze handling, and create scenarios, do story telling and nice mockups to improve usability and activity.

Multiplatform Storytelling gets more and more popular – where different products from film, webdocu, blog, Games-App, VR-film and real space installations are being used to tell interwoven stories. The strategic content and design conception of a real Crossmedia-project will be done in this course, focusing on Web-Design for Webdocu and Tangible Design for an installation (HCI with beamer, Kinect, Intel realsense gesture control). In the given storyworld of Luther / the parsonage different methods of concepting for Multiplatform in general and for webdoc and installation will be explained and together basic approaches for Interaction Design, User Interface and the User Experience will be worked out. These concepts are to be produced in the next semester then and become part of a nationally travelling installation and webdoc.

EXPERTISE FINE ARTS | ForeignProfessor: Lisa Stybor

We will define, discuss, investigate – in time, space and culture…

relationship/correlation: we perceive, recognize, establish, dissolve

the personal background comes into play

the approach: we interpret, experiment, give shape, formulate

with usual and unusual media (drawing / painting / installation )

we work individually or as a team

EXPERTISE PHOTOGRAPHYProfessor: Klaus Pollmeier

In our course we will review a deeper insight into photographic communication from various perspectives. Depending on our individual interests, theoretical and practical aspects of the media will be researched and applied. Since MA/MAID students come from different universities with very different experiences in photography, the class will try to provide technical and theoretical information and assignments to improve individual skills or to support current projects.

EXPERTISE TYPOGRAPHY | Inventory of FailureProfessor: Torsten Köchlin

Inventory of Failure

In times of maximizing performance, daily struggle for existence and permanent fight for dignity, failure is not well regarded. In Germany, it is rather seen as a defect. In a study dealing with tolerance for mistakes, Germany ranks the penultimate place among 61 countries.

As a counter-trend, books with titles like “The Desire to Fail” or “About the Luck of Failure” and events like “Fuck Up Nights” try to destigmatize failure politically, socially and personally and encourage a “culture of failure”.

The international mixture of the class promises interesting discussions. Own and collected stories of failure and the lessons learned are the basis for work on posters and newspapers. Micro- and macrotypography, font choice and font mixture are central themes as well as special rules for typesetting in different languages.

Chemicals and radiation influence our nutrition and thus our bodies. The substances are added intentionally for technological or health-related purposes (e.g. food additives), or end up in our food uncontrolled through environmental pollution of the air, water and soil. Some consequences of this large chemical experiment are already obvious, other repercussions remain yet unforeseen.

Instead of using design to create solutions for this worldwide threatening health hazards, we will use design to reexamine and analyze the present state of affairs, we will apply design to explore, question and challenge our assumptions and preconceptions and we will contribute to a critical discussion about possible futures.

The workshop is a practical hands-on creative session, not a theoretical discussion class! The outcomes will be speculative products, tools, devices, services, business concepts and alike that foster critical reflection and discussion around the given topic of toxics in food.

Eating together is in every culture the basis for communication and understanding. The trend goes from cocooning to pubic dining – often with a philosophical or political demand. At the common table one comes closer to each other and is creating common ideas.

In the expertise-week at October 28th at 6:00 p.m. the „Tafel der Begegnung” (public table where many people from different countries) will take place in Dessau – initiated from the Quartiersoffensive Theater- und Johannisviertel and VorOrt. In the VorOrt-Haus since SomSem 2013 (short project Prof. Gellert) there is a projectkitchen which in the future should be more than the community kitchen of the users. With the beginning of the construction works to secure the roof and facade of the building a concept shall be developed what the VorOrt-kitchen can be in the future – at the best an „idea kitchen”. The project wants to find an answer to what this could mean.

COMPACT WEEK 3D | Advanced ModellingProfessor: Prof. Uwe Gellert

To create and experience forms by visualizing them in three dimensions is the main access to evaluate the quality and suitability of design concepts. The manual model making process – especially during the development in the first phases of the design process – is a valuable and rewarding step to explore dimensions, usability features and basic esthetic appearance. Even in the age of digital making and visualization the human hand and eye are an immediate and optimal tool to obtain a deep and fine grasp of the later design.

The course is eligible for students with focus 3D, and as well for all other students with a keen interest in quick and significant model making.